In Culture
- This is the state bird of Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.
- It features in the title and central metaphor of the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. In that novel, mockingbirds are portrayed as innocent and generous, and two of the major characters, Atticus Finch and Miss Maudie, say it is a sin to kill a mockingbird because "they don't do one thing for us but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us".
- The traditional American lullaby "Hush Little Baby" has been recorded in numerous musical styles. The lyrics refer to Northern Mockingbirds once being popular as pets, and begin:
- Hush little baby, don't say a word,
- Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird.
- And if that mockingbird don't sing,
- Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring.
- "Listen to the Mocking Bird" is a classic American folk song.
- President Thomas Jefferson had a pet mockingbird named Dick.
Read more about this topic: Northern Mockingbird
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)